The Fourth Matrix
by Sakiku
Summary: On the search for the Allspark, it takes Bumblebee about 500 years longer to find earth. It is a very desolate planet he finds.
1. Computer

**Fandom:** Matrix/Transformers

**Rating:** PG-13

**Words: **~10k

**Summary:** On the search for the Allspark, it takes Bumblebee about 500 years longer to find earth. It is a very desolate planet he finds.

**Warnings:** none

**A/N:** Written for RobotBigBang. I'm very sorry to admit that, despite the very long writing time, I didn't get it done... This is the first part, the other(s) will follow as soon as they are done...

Many thanks to veganwoodwalker for betaing! She did an awesome job!

Oh, and look at sparrowshellcat's dreamwidth accound for some AWESOME cover art: sparrowshellcat. dreamwidth. org

~Sakiku

**Time units**

klik - ~1.5 minutes

breem – about 15 minutes (10 kilk)

joor – about 4 hours

orn – about 10 days

vorn – about 80 years

–

**The Fourth Matrix  
**

**Part 1: Computer  
**

_Booting..._

_Boot variables: _

gravity = true;

surroundings = solidSurface;

threatLevel=UNKNOWN;

_Combat kernel: _

booting...

With a static fritz, Bumblebee's systems jump-started.

Quicker than an oxyhydrogen reaction he exploded from his cometary form, somersaulting under the influence of gravity until his pedes hit the dirt, his pulse arrays engaged, weapons capacitors charged and primed for combat.

immediateDanger = false;

_Environmental sensors:_

booting...

gravity = 0.985 Cybertron;

atmosphericDensity = 24.851 Cybertron;

location = planetarySurface;

temperature = 290K;

immediateDangerFromEnvironme nt = false;

_Calculating weapons stats._

Atmospheric diffusion:

Pulse beam power absorption = 0.13 percent per step;

Pulse beam widening = 0.0001 gon per step;

Combined pulse beam power loss = 0.18 percent per step.

_Calculating maximal penetrating pulse beam reach:_

132 steps for 3-6 armor.

_Combat kernel:_

initializing threat assessment protocols...

North, East, South, West – visibility three kilostep radius, clear.

Skies – visibility five kilostep radius, clear.

Ground – highly resistant to EM echolocation; twenty steps clear.

He swiftly turned around his own axis to verify optically what his surround EM sensors had already postulated with a 98 percent probability: he was alone in a rocky wasteland of unknown dimensions.

_Threat assessment variables:_

environmentalDanger = low;

hostiles = NONE;

dangerFromHostiles = N/A;

surroundings = [coordinatesLocation:UNKNOWN, coordinatesPlanet:UNKNOWN, coordinatesSolarSystem:UNKNOWN, coordinatesGalaxy:UNKNOWN]

_Threat assessment result:_

no immediate threat;

more data necessary for further extrapolation.

When an inspection of most common light bandwidths, from infrared over visible to ultraviolet, didn't reveal any suspicious activity either, Bumblebee's crouched position slowly relaxed. He didn't detransform his weapons though, still running on hair-trigger combat protocols.

_Resuming boot sequence..._

Initializing loading memory...

Initializing loading core-programming...

Initializing loading personality-net...

Loading full combat protocol...

A speed-optimized kernel of combat and threat assessment protocols was the first to boot, having saved his life countless of times. It came online long before the slower-loading memory cores, even if that meant that he might react violently towards non-hostile situations. War made such atrocities necessary.

Only gradually did his other systems come online, his neural personality-net, his higher order logics, his emotive and moralistic axioms that had been p-doped into the crystal lattice of his spark chamber.

Yes, even spark coding was of secondary priority to survival.

It was harder to load his immediate-access memory cores than it should have been – something had scrambled them good. His medium-access was largely unaffected though, and his long-term archive not at all. The files which had been swapped out from his immediate-access memory gave him a hint as to his current situation.

Last he remembered, he had been in space where he had finally found a planet with Allspark radiation. It had been the third planet of a G2V star, but a dark and virulently active electromagnetic hull had made it nearly impossible for any of his scans to penetrate through. His last memory was of deliberating whether exploring the origin of Allspark radiation was worth the danger of braving the complete unknown.

Afterwards, there was a blank of unknown length. Even his internal chronometer had been scrambled badly enough that he wasn't sure how much time had passed. But it wasn't too much of a mystery what had happened in between. He only had to look upward to the churning, dark skies to realize that yes, he must have made planet-fall. He could feel the constant bombardment of electromagnetic discharges buffering him from down there.

He supposed that he must have spent several orns in orbit to collect more data, and that those orns were lost in his corrupted IAM. At least he hoped so – the only thing he could remember was cursing the churning blackish gray atmosphere which absorbed nearly all wavelengths. He hadn't been stupid enough to take the plunge down into the gravity well without knowing anything about the temperatures or whether there'd be anything stable to land on, had he?

If he had, then he had been damn lucky. Because the environment sported a surprising lack of immediate dangers, and the ground a stable rock formation that seemed entirely unaffected by the long furrow his cometary form had dug into it.

What surprised him was the amount of unstable element-decay going on.

Gamma radiation was so plentiful that it penetrated deep into his subsystems. His nanobots had more to do than usual to repair ionization where it wasn't practical, but his energon practically drank in the highly energetic rays. It was a curious feeling, getting charged like that. He hadn't felt such an abundance of energy for a very, very long time – not even out in space where the stars' radiation was undampened by atmosphere.

His first thought was that someone must have detonated a nuclear fission bomb. Several, in fact, to reach such a level of fall-out. If the Allspark was indeed on this planet, and if there had indeed happened a nuclear war, would it have survived a direct hit? Or, Bumblebee shivered, would it have been pulverized and spread all over the planet, and that was the reason it had fairly radiated with Allspark energy from outer space?

Large helium cores, yet another byproduct of nuclear decay, pinged off his plates like dirt in a sonic shower. High-energy electrons were the most distracting, not strong enough to power his energon, but capable of introducing much noise to his input.

What had happened here? Could it be possible that the level of radiation was natural?

He looked around. There was nothing but barren rock and dark skies, with only the occasional organic microbes as far as he could detect. Wind and weather had started eroding the surface, but there were enough sharp edges where rock rather broke before being smoothed down.

The solar system had looked to be approximately 130 million vorns old, with the planets probably half that. This should have been more than enough time for the unstable heavy elements to stabilize. And the sun was a G2V star, which indicated that nearly all atoms in the solar system, and this planet too, should be on the lower side of the nucleic energy minimum of iron. Not above.

Additionally, the ratio of decay elements to others simply couldn't support any theory of the radiation being natural and having gone on since the planet's creation.

Bumblebee sighed. So, nuclear war it was.

Folding down into his Cybertronian alt-mode, he hovered half a step above the broken surface and slowly drove towards the ridge he could barely see on the horizon. Perhaps, from such a high vantage-point, he could make out more of this planet.

The skies were another mystery. Even from down here, he could feel the electromagnetic turmoil happening in the stratosphere, and the darkness simply couldn't be natural. Was that deactivated nanobots he could smell on the plates of his cometary form?

More importantly – _why_ would someone go through the effort of erecting a planet-wide barrier like that?

Lightening flashed continuously, dipping the dark surface into a stroboscopic light. He could _guess_ that he was on the side of the planet that was currently turned towards the sun, but he doubted the night would be much darker.

Yet another piece of the unfolding puzzle was the space debris that had floated around the blackish-gray planet. Bumblebee's slowly unscrambling immediate-access memory provided him with a snapshot of hundreds of dead satellites orbiting in various heights, and even more breakage floating between them. None of it looked operational anymore.

It all pointed towards a terrible, terrible war.

Had Decepticons found this planet first, and had whatever race lived here fought them off at a horrific price? He hadn't seen or sensed any deactivated Cybertronians yet, but Starscream alone could load enough nuclear missiles to bomb half a planet like this. And if they had come with the Nemesis and bombarded them from orbit, there would be no empty frames anywhere to find.

On the other hand, had Decepticons found this planet first, Bumblebee was almost a hundred percent certain that the Allspark would have been gone by now. No Allspark radiation to sense anymore.

Unless it _was_ already gone and there was only left-over radiation escaping from rocks that had absorbed it for several hundred thousand vorns. Depending on how close the Alkaris Anomaly had spit out the Cube, it could have been on the planet for nearly half a million vorns – more than enough time to leave at least something behind.

He didn't need to unscramble his instant-access memory to know that this was probably why he had made planet-fall despite the dangers. He – they, the Autobots – needed to know. Was the Allspark still there?

His senses stretched in all directions, having engaged the special mods of his sensor suite that let him filter for more spectra than most bots knew what to do with. The ever-present discharges of electricity up in the stratosphere put a large crimp into his observations, only barely compensated for by his filter algorithms. But he had operated under worse conditions before. The methane storms on that moon two hundred vorns ago had definitely been worse.

Photons, and thus most optical bandwidths, provided only secondary information thanks to the nearly impenetrable ceiling of clouds overhead. It was dark enough that Bumblebee felt himself reminded of the burnt-out husk that Cybertron was, their home planet, which was drifting aimlessly through space between solar systems. The multitude of smaller and bigger weapons craters he was scanning, certainly enhanced the comparison.

Contrary to Cybertron though, this planet was largely organic instead of metal; carbon and oxygen instead of iron and noble gases.

Molecular analyzers hinted at comparatively large amounts of dihydrogenmonoxide, dinitrogen, dioxygen, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the ground, carbon-, oxygen-, nitrogen- and hydrogen compounds were the most common particles found, with metal oxides only being a far distant second after sulfur, phosphor and alkaline earths.

The foundation for organic life.

He had already sensed a multitude of microorganisms, from bacteria to amoebae, but anything more highly-evolved showed signs of being dependent on light, and thus dead thanks to the dark cloud covering. On his way to the ridge, he had been forced several times to transform back to root-mode and navigate large cylinders of fallen organic structures. The entire ground was covered in a layer of decayed organic matter.

Was there still any sentient life on the planet? Or had those who had fought the war here, fled to other systems?

He didn't think he would find much. For machine life, the planet was too organic; for organic life the radiation was too deadly. It was chilling to drive through a grave of such dimensions.

Joor after joor the rocky planet passed by him, some places more broken up, others not so much. He had definitely found remnants of a civilization, shelters, metallic husks, but nothing alive. Craters from various kinds of weapon were still prominent, only gradually getting eroded by wind and weather. They looked as young as five vorns, less than five hundred of the planet's solar years.

The signs of past life grew less frequent though the higher he climbed the ridge that was turning out to be a whole mountain range.

When the planetary rotation removed any remaining sun rays, the near-permanent electric discharges up in the clouds were bright and frequent enough to keep the visibility at about the same level as before. He relied on his electromagnetic sensors all the more during that time, slowly crossing the mountain range.

It was nearing sunrise when he felt it.

He was very surprised when suddenly his antennae twitched with an electromagnetic frequency coming from the other side of the mountain range. Bumblebee halted and waited. It had felt almost... deliberate, compared to the random lightening above.

Long breems passed until Bumblebee was almost ready to think it had only been his imagination. But then – there it was again! Clearly a modulated wave, its amplitude fluctuating in a way that was almost certain to be deliberate.

Bumblebee recorded everything and immediately fed it through his force-decryption programs. Despite the horrendous reception he discovered that the first layer was a primitive quaternary encoding – high amplitudes and low amplitudes. The next layer was a bit harder, but he thought meaning was transported in blocks of eight binary values, with some correction bits inserted for every package.

He frowned. It felt suspiciously familiar. Not the content, but the way the message had been created. The channel correction, the redundancy algorithms, the encoding. Everything. Like... like a primitive form of Cybertronian?

Were there Cybertronians still here?

Reengaging his weapons, he kept half his focus on his surroundings at this sign of potential danger as he made his way closer. The broadcast seemed to be constant, comprised of many hundreds of thousands of messages, and not directed at him at all. Like a functioning society of at least several hundred individuals.

Sometimes his way led him into deadspots where the broadcast didn't reach, but the further he went the better his reception grew, to the point where a decryption could be attempted.

He listened more intently, trying to gather every bit of information he could. Patterns started repeating especially in the center of the messages. About twenty, maybe twenty-two two-block-combinations were the most prevalent, to the point that Bumblebee was thinking it might be an alphanumeric language.

Not Cybertronian then. Maybe another race that had had close contact with Cybertronians?

With a sigh, he started the long and arduous task of decrypting a language from nothing but data. Even with his special skills, that was a task of several years. Years he didn't have.

But thankfully, there were other transmissions, too, besides the language transmissions. They contained only some alphanumeric symbols in the beginning and then incomprehensible sequences of zeros and ones. Experimenting on the assumption that it was data transfers, he found what might be compressed pictures and maybe even video and audio streams.

And he still couldn't shake the suspiciously familiar feeling. Sure, Cybertronian didn't have an alphanumeric character system, and their images and video encoded more than just three different wavelengths, but the rest...

By the time he had written a program to decode their image messages, he was prepared for nearly anything. He still almost drove into a ditch when he saw what he would have to deal with. The first image was little short of horrifying, a robotic entity that was comprised of an ovaloid head with no body, but an incomprehensible amount of tentacles instead.

It looked like a modified Quintesson reject – all those tentacles gave Bumblebee the shivers. Sure, he had never seen a Quintesson before – he was too young to have lived during the last war with them – but sensor memory feeds from Kup had shown him their strange technorganic bodies. And tentacles had featured pretty heavily on them.

The more pictures and videos he decrypted, surveillance vids in his opinion, the more he had to fight his instinctive revulsion. Many of the frame types on this planet showed a high similarity with Quintessons. There were a few that were more bipedal oriented like Transformers, but the rest of them resembled Quintessons. He didn't know whether he wanted to make contact with them.

On top of it, the fact that he could make sense of things so _easily_ seemed strange. Suspicious even. Although the content of those audio and video files proved quite surely that it wasn't Decepticons, the similarities to the Cybertronian way of transmitting data were just too _large_. The entire situation pretty much reeked of foul-play.

When he detected an electromagnetic signature that went far beyond the transmissions he had hacked into so far, he immediately took cover and dialed down all active scans. If he were on Cybertron, he would have been dead certain he had just sensed a bot. As it was, he was only to 95 percent certain that there was something alive that was approaching him from beyond the mountains.

And indeed, the signature slowly came closer, homing in on his position like a beacon. Was this how the trap was sprung?

He waited. The presence was still too far away to tell anything for certain, and its slow speed gave him enough confidence to not bolt immediately. Additionally, the closer it came, the more differences he could feel to a normal Cybertronian mechanism. A less vibrant electromagnetic spectrum. Different core frequencies. He had never felt a bot that was alive, and yet felt so... empty. Almost like a drone, but not quite.

Still a kilostep away, the terrain finally permitted him a glimpse.

Slowly, his armor plates loosened a bit from the tight hold he had kept on them. Not a Decepticon. Not a Cybertronian at all. It was one of the more mech-like creatures, one that had long, spindly arms and only two tentacles which it used as legs. As far as he could see, it was in root mode, walking upright an a strange slithering motion. Due to its tentacle-legs it didn't step like a normal mech would; but its bi-pedal frame felt at least a little bit less horrifying than those Quintesson-like abominations.

And still, it was homing in on his position. There was no way this wasn't deliberate. The only reason he hadn't moved to a different hiding spot already, was that the bot seemed to be absolutely alone. For the three kilostep radius his sensors could cover, the approaching mech seemed to be the only figure.

The longer he watched, the more his combat protocols tightened his armor plates again though. He was prepared for nearly anything.

When it had neared to half a kilostep, Bumblebee's stereo vision could focus enough to make an absolute height measurement instead of being forced to compare it relatively to its surrounding environment. He was a bit surprised. It was – small? It barely reached mid-chest with him, and that was if he counted the height which was added by long, spindly antennae curving back from its helmet. It had looked bigger in the images. At least he could be quite sure that one of the three frequencies they encoded in their image transmissions was a deep red. Its optics were very distinguishing that way.

Very Decepticon-like.

It was nearly instinctual by now to charge his capacitors and remove nearly all safeties upon the sight of red optics. His unfolded pulse arrays hummed quietly, a hair's trigger away from unloading into the bot.

The bot stopped almost immediately, still outside his range. It didn't have any visible weapons, but its torso could be hiding a bomb. The whole affair was a bit unusual for a Decepticon tactic; however, one never knew what new abominations Shockwave would come up with next.

The bot didn't do anything in return. It just remained standing there, facing his direction, and... waiting.

Bumblebee remained wary. If this wasn't a trap but a case of first contact, this would be the time to attempt communication. And indeed, there was a transmission on a very high wave frequency that could only come from the bot. It was one of those messages with exclusive alphanumeric content, which Bumblebee couldn't decipher yet.

He frowned. It still didn't make any more sense than all the hundreds and thousands other messages that he was constantly listening to. His language decryption algorithms had barely had enough time to figure out several more probable alpha-numeric signs.

In response, he tried copying what he had identified as message header and inserted a quickly generated picture that hopefully was in the correct format for the other mech to decipher. It showed him and the bot standing next to each other, no aggression. As an afterthought, he sent another message with randomly generated content from those twenty-four alphanumeric characters in an attempt to show his non-understanding.

The bot didn't react at all. It just kept standing there, staring at him to the point that Bumblebee was starting to think it was a bomb after all. Its behavior was like an unsparked drone, a class 3 sentience at the most.

Then, when Bumblebee was just about to move away from the potential threat, it chirped another transmission at him. Bumblebee stopped immediately and set to decoding it. To his surprise, it was the same picture he had sent only with different color information. Apparently, yellow was encoded by a combination of red and another wavelength, a curious idea. Was this done out of a need to reduce the amount of data for information exchange, or did it have a deeper relevance? Like, for example, having a completely different mechanology that was incapable of perceiving a continuous spectrum?

It seemed quite telling that the image had no microwave or high-frequency emissions attached. Just the narrow band of regular photon spectrum.

He adjusted his rendered image accordingly and sent it back, joined by one where he added his name glyph above a picture of himself. Hopefully it would be understood as an attempt to communicate, since it seemed the native bot either had no body language at all or worked on a completely different set.

Again, the bot took a long time to come up with an answer. Bumblebee was starting to suspect that it had very limited processing capability. The response was an image of the bot with what Bumblebee hoped was a visual translation of the alphanumeric characters he had discovered. There were six of them, four individual ones and two doubled up.

Huh. So they _did_ have a graphical representation of abstract things like characters.

Bumblebee was starting to think more and more that this was the real thing, that this was indeed a member of a mechanoid race he hadn't encountered yet. Thinking up a first-contact scenario like this went far beyond almost any Decepticon. Even Shockwave. The only mech patient and knowledgeable enough was Soundwave, but even for him it was a bit too round-about.

Alright. This was an alien bot that was trying to find a way to communicate with him, and it wasn't doing a bad job at understanding its end of the conversation. It probably had evolved beyond the class 3 sentience Bumblebee had thought it to be, even if it was very slow. Pattern recognition and the problem solving algorithms necessary to establish alien communication were signs of a class 4 sentience at the very least, if not class five.

Either that, or it was in contact with a higher intelligence by means Bumblebee couldn't detect. Quantum-synched processors or the likes.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be willing to and capable of holding a cross-language conversation, and Bumblebee gladly used that.

Next came the step of tying the images the bot had given him, to the alpha-numeric patterns he had isolated. It took some creative thinking to translate binary values into a graphical representation. Bumblebee next sent the other bot a succession of six pictures which each contained one of the visual characters and a randomly chosen character of the 24 binary blocks he had identified as alpha-numerical. If Bumblebee had made the correct assumptions, both towards how the bot's language and processing worked, and towards how intelligent it was, this would set the basics for deciphering their language.

Again he had to wait a long, long time for a response. Longer than any of the times before. But when the answer came – different binaries matched to the alphanumeric characters – he couldn't help an elated flare of his fields. Because the bot hadn't only sent matches for the four characters encountered so far, but also 25 others with corresponding binary blocks.

Seemed like he had missed a couple, but all those he had detected were present.

Success. He could read their language.

Now the only thing left to do was fill their words with meaning.

A flurry of pictures and words followed, the bot answering his queries without hesitation. Slowly Bumblebee established a vocabulary of several hundred words – basic and more than likely incorrect on many accounts, but grounds for communication.

Suddenly the bot stopped responding. It only ever chirped back '_follow_', turning around and gliding away several steps but then stopping and looking back at Bumblebee.

He took a while to decide, until he came to the conclusion that despite the red optics there were no Decepticons involved. After all, it was highly unlikely that they would invent an entire alien robotic species including their language simply to set a trap.

Slowly, as to not scare the bot, Bumblebee folded into his hover alt and approached it. It retreated several more steps, saw that he was following, and seemingly content it led the way.

It was slow going, very slow going because apparently the bot didn't have an alt-mode it could use. And, confident as he was that it wasn't a Decepticon trap, Bumblebee still was too cautious to let an unknown entity into his interior. So he had to keep to the pace the bot set, which was starting to strain his patience because apparently the bot couldn't walk and communicate at the same time.

Well, maybe it could, but it didn't respond to any of the transmissions Bumblebee sent it in an attempt to keep learning the language. As it was, his current vocabulary was barely enough to give his language processors a sporting chance at learning new words by trying to decrypt the library of transmissions he had already gathered and kept gathering.

After nearly an orn and the EM communication buzz getting stronger by the joor, Bumblebee thought he could see a city growing on the ever-dark horizon. The closer they got, the more Bumblebee had to correct his size estimations upwards; despite how small the bot leading him was, the buildings were as tall as any Cybertronian living tower.

And there were thousands, if not millions of signatures moving on his long-range scanners.

This had to be a center where many of the mechanoid race congregated on a regular basis. He was curious what it would look like.

To his disappointment though, the bot led him into an underground tunnel that looked old and disused. It was just about tall enough that he would be able to stand in the center if he transformed back into root-mode, but his alt-mode definitely was more comfortable space-wise. Small puddles of dihydrogenmonoxide pooled at its center, but thankfully it never went so high that he would have to step into it.

Thanks to the strong magnetic field of the planet, Bumblebee could keep track of their direction. The turns they took always led them straight towards the city he had spotted above-ground, so maybe he would get to see it after all.

Why was the bot leading him this way though? Were there dangers out there? Or did the bot not want him to be seen?

Already alert, he kept building a charge close enough to his weapons capacitors that he would be able to fire within half a femto-klik. Lights based on halogen ionization illuminated their way, having been placed in regular intervals. The echoing quality of the tunnels would give their presence away early on; but at the same time it would reveal anyone heading towards them. Unless they were waiting in an ambush.

Stomping down on his paranoia, Bumblebee took interest in how the scenery around him changed. The occasional puddles vanished; the disrepaired walls became smooth metal; the illumination became brighter. Doors, or at least what Bumblebee assumed to be doors, appeared. All of them were closed though, so he didn't have any idea where they led. And there were sometimes other bots of the same frame type as his guide walking along at the side of the tunnel, out of their way and ignoring them completely.

Drones. Probably. In any case, none of them stared, not even when Bumblebee briefly flashed his headlights at them.

Finally, the bot leading him walked towards one of the doors – there hadn't been any other doors for nearly a klik, so what had to behind it had to be huge – and it opened after a short burst of communication.

Bumblebee was disappointed and elated at the very same time. The room behind the door was tiny, nothing more than a small cubicle, but it revealed what could only be a console. There was a screen, a keyboard with unlabeled keys, and that was about it. It was made for the bot's size, so Bumblebee had to fold himself quite a bit to fit into the room.

The bot finally seemed to acknowledge Bumblebee's presence for once as it turned towards him. _Talk/question/speak/answer_, it sent towards him.

Bumblebee hadn't been able to narrow the translation down any further. _Talk/question/speak/answer, _he repeated, not quite knowing what the bot wanted.

To his surprise, the screen of the console lit and displayed rows upon rows of the alphanumeric symbols the bot had taught him. He could see the _Talk/question/speak/answer_ word highlighted quite a few times amongst other text.

Curiously, he tried another word he knew. _Follow_ he sent, and the screen changed to display text with a disproportionate amount of _follow_ words in it. He wasn't quite sure yet whether it was just a random collection of sentences around _follow_ or whether it was a dictionary, but he was very delighted with his discovery.

He tried out some other words he had already learned, and then one that he picked from the screen text. Every time he got a response, once even with an image. Now he was sure he had gotten _rock_ right. With such a treasure-trove of information at his disposal, deciphering their language would be a lot easier!

A quick glance at the bot that had led him here showed that it was doing nothing but watching him. Interpreting that as an encouragement to continue as he had, Bumblebee started firing requests at the console in earnest. His own processors apparently were much quicker than the ones behind the console because as soon as the text was displayed completely Bumblebee could fire the next command, having already copied the entire screen content for his decryption algorithms to analyze.

Within a joor, he had a basic vocabulary of several thousand words, including some grammar rules. Within another joor, he had found out how to access the knowledge stores behind the simple text response. Audio files of how the words were to be pronounced, maps of the planet, schematics for what could only be one of the micro-drones, technical equations. And every detail he found was another puzzle piece of what this mechanoid race was like.

For one, the bot that had accompanied him and was still watching him, was indeed barely more than a class 3 sentient drone. Its frame type was called 'runner', and it didn't have enough individuality to speak for itself. Same for quite a few other frame type, the Quintesson-like sentinels amongst them. Throughout his research, he had gotten the impression that they either were permanently linked to some sort of hive-mind, or that they got their orders from a single bot. He didn't quite know which.

There were other mechanoids though, some of them _programs_ even, that definitely broke the class 4 barrier of true sentience. Maybe one of them was the one to control the runners?

After nearly four joor the runner stirred again, drawing Bumblebee's attention away from the blueprints of a simple but effective hover vehicle that seemed to be quite similar to his alt-mode.

"Understand?" it asked aloud, a test of how much Bumblebee had learned.

If his vocalizer hadn't been damaged beyond repair at Tyger Pax, he would have answered with the vocal representation of their language. As it was, Bumblebee had to restrict himself to merely sending his answer back.

_/I can understand you. I can speak now./_

He considered himself quite fluent by now, with a lot more vocabulary than necessary for simple communication. And his language decryption algorithms were continuously adding more to his dictionary, working on what he had saved away instead of getting new feeds from the console.

"Follow," it once again responded and slithered out of the room on its two tentacle-legs. "Talk to leader."

So they _did_ have a leader.

Getting curioser by the klik, Bumblebee drove behind the bot, unfolding into root-mode as soon as the ceiling height allowed. His sensors told him that they were both advancing further towards the city, and at the same time going upwards. Was the leader above-ground?

It seemed very likely when the runner stepped into what could only be an elevator. The elevator was even smaller than the console room, making Bumblebee quite uncomfortable with the closeness as they ascended.

Nearly two hundred steps up, the elevator doors opened again to show quite a different view from the underground tunnels.

It was starting to look more like he was used to from Cybertron. But... different at the same time. While the ground and the walls were made of metal now, they nonetheless looked strangely organic. Cables of various thickness ran along the top, and the hallway had a rounded ceiling so low that Bumblebee continuously brushed his head fins against lines that hadn't been fastened as tightly as others. The ground was nothing but a metal grid beneath which more cables could be seen running – some of them as thick as Bumblebee's forearms. Some of them carried luminescent liquids – energon? - dipping the corridor in a dim bluish light.

The bot continued leading him and gradually, Bumblebee discovered other, smaller bots. They were barely larger than his palm, six- or eight-legged, and they scurried in the darkness of the tunnels or beneath the grid and the cables. If they had optics at all they weren't visible, and the way they moved Bumblebee doubted they were more than a class two sentience.

In the end he was led to a large platform that opened to the dark skies, an abyss of busy machine life opening up as he looked down. Strangely formed spires grew from wire- and cable-linked depths. Transport tunnels occasionally flashed with passing bots, and there were incredibly many different models flitting all throughout the airspace in between.

What Bumblebee had thought to be an entire house revealed itself to be yet another build, a huge frame presumably to repair large structures. It was comparable in size to a Supreme. It maneuvered itself along on a multitude of seemingly spindly legs, but which had to be at least as thick as Bumblebee. Tentacles were hanging down its underside and grazed whatever it was crouched above.

However, all this paled in comparison to what was happening at optic level. Hundreds and thousands of small hover bots were starting to cluster together, linking their limbs, arranging and transforming their carapaces until they built a huge head, at least five times as big as Bumblebee was tall.

Bumblebee had seen how gestalts integrated, three to five bots which joined to become one larger bot. However, he hadn't ever seen anything on the scale that was currently happening in front of him. It had to be hundreds and thousands of the little bots flocking together, and while the face was already visible still more came and integrated themselves into the emerging superbot.

So he had been right about his idea of a collective hive-mind. Because it was more than clear that this was the leader the runner had intended to lead him to.

When the head was complete, huge optics opened and stared at him.

"Intruder," was the first word it said.

It took a while to match the acoustic signal to the corresponding dictionary entry, but once Bumblebee had the translation his spark sank.

/_I did not intend to intrude,/_ he transmitted on the same frequency that he had used with the runner. He realized only belatedly that the superbot might not be capable of tuning in to that.

"Purpose?" it growled, and Bumblebee thought it looked angry. On the other hand, the multi-bot's facial expression might mean something completely different.

/_I am searching for a relic that seems to have landed on your planet. A cube, about three times my height, and it is decorated with glyphs./_

"Purpose with cube?"

Bumblebee really didn't want to talk about their war. What he wanted was to grab the cube and take off with it to never see this planet again. It would be different if the planet was uninhabited, or if he knew more about the mechanoid race – Machines, as they called themselves. All he could tell about them so far was what they had allowed him access to, and Bumblebee knew only too well that even facts could be made to lie.

But inhabited the planet was, and get along with the natives he must. So, the truth it was.

_/Our race is in a war, a terrible war. The Allspark is something of immense importance for both sides. If it remains here, our war will inevitably follow it and be brought to your planet./_

"Time until it will arrive here?"

Bumblebee shrugged helplessly. /_I do not know. Space is big. As far as I know, there are no Decepticon for several hundred light years. But they are good at hiding./_

"Decepticon?"

Bumblebee had translated the Cybertronian word as best as he could with the limited vocabulary he had. But of course, even if the Machines had met the Decepticons before, they might have translated them to another name.

Bumblebee quickly rendered an image of Megatron for the machine to see, with Bumblebee next to the warlord for size comparison. He chirped it over the same frequency he had been using to talk and started to explain. /_This is Megatron, the leader of the Decepticon. He rules over his faction with violence, reprogramming, and extortion. Originally, he took over most of the war frames, so they never had the most... moral codes. If he catches wind of the Allspark's existence, he won't stop at anything to have it in his servos./_

"Your intended mode of action?"

_/Trade. Negotiate. While the talks are going on, my leader will probably ask to station a couple fighters nearby in case Decepticons come before we have reached an agreement. It is of utmost importance that the Allspark doesn't fall into their hands. But all of this is moot if the Allspark's not here anymore. Do you have the Allspark?/_

The huge face merely kept staring at him as miniature lightening flashed between the spokes radiating out from its sides. Bumblebee waited patiently, not knowing whether it would process things any faster than the bot he had met first.

Finally, it frowned. "Follow the Runner."

He looked around for his guide and wasn't surprised when he found it still waiting where the platform emerged from the building, completely motionless.

Question was: why was he supposed to follow the bot? Did the huge face intend to show him the Allspark, or did it simply want to get rid of his presence?

_/Alright,/_ Bumblebee finally agreed because too much hinged on the good-will of the Machines. If they tried to put him away, he'd merely have to find another way to search for the Allspark. /_Thank you for __your help./_

He nodded at the Machine face as he had found it as an accepted gesture of both greeting and parting, and turned around to head back towards the runner. The small machine was already gliding down the corridor and Bumblebee had to hurry to keep up with it.

Without saying or sending a word, it slowly led him deeper and deeper, through countless metal tunnels that became cruder as time went on. Bumblebee thought they had descended nearly a kilometer before metal eventually gave way to rock again, showing that they were on an organic planet after all.

And still the runner led him downward, this time through tunnels not illuminated by anything. Bumblebee turned on his headlights to see how far it went, but even on a high setting it vanished off into darkness.

The runner was guiding him deeper and deeper into the tunnel – dug by crude machinery into even cruder rock. On a non-metallic planet it just seemed so... violating to break open the crust like that, especially since he was only too aware that organic planets tended to bleed heavy lava when injured too deeply. But down they went and warmer it got, and Bumblebee was only too glad that his frame wasn't dependent on aerobic chemical reactions. Compared to the atmosphere outside, there was a noticeable lack of oxygen.

Eventually, he could feel it. Feel the subliminal energy that spoke of creation, of healing, of Before and After.

The Allspark was there after all.

He shivered. The last time he had been exposed to Allspark radiation, it had been at Tyger Pax. And even then it had been diluted with pain and fear and war and death.

Like in a daydream he followed the beckoning call to its source, the runner trailing behind him over the last few meters. Rocky tunnels suddenly opened to a huge cavern, and it was only his perception of non-photonic wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that allowed him to see the entire grandness.

Bright as his headlights might have been, they utterly failed to illuminate the vast space stretching in front of him. But photons weren't necessary when he could feel his entire frame vibrate with the pulsating electromagnetics. Beautiful as the glyphs decorating the Allspark might be, it was only when viewed in the composition of all electromagnetic spectra that their true beauty shone. The overlying harmonics interfered with each other, a subtle adding and subtracting of amplitudes until the spectrum itself told the story of Cybertron's creation, of prayers and blessings and life budding from the darkness of non-existence.

Bumblebee could only read a small part of the stories, but Optimus had told him once that he had never before seen something so... fundamental.

But amongst the ancient and spark-deep vibrations, there were newer fields. Lighter, more transient, and while they didn't feel completely wrong they just as clearly brought a dissonant element into the symphony of creation. Upon closer examination, it was power lines leading to and away from the cube, for purposes Bumblebee couldn't quite identify. Unless...

He tried to isolate the runner's electromagnetics from the surrounding sea. The runner didn't have a spark, but it _did_ resonate with Allspark energy. Resonate quite closely at that. Bumblebee shuttered and unshuttered his optics in surprise. /_You – the Allspark is your Source?/_

"Affirmative."

It was hard to read the runner's expression – until he remembered that runners weren't aware enough to have emotions. There was absolutely no change in either facial or mechanical body language, and the statement needed to be taken at face value.

The calculations and simulations running through Bumblebee's processors weren't pointing a pretty picture of the situation. Since the Machines didn't have a spark to sustain them on their own, they were probably highly dependent on the Allspark. For sentience, for reproduction, for _anything_.

_/If we were to take the Allspark with us, what would that mean for you?/_ he asked with a bad feeling in his processors.

The runner's optics clicked and whirred, and then suddenly Bumblebee could almost see that it had made contact with the hive-mind. It straightened, its sensory tentacles swept backwards at an attentive-looking angle while also being poised to strike. "Removing the Source will lead to our eventual deactivation."

_/And not removing it will eventually lead the Decepticons to your planet./_

"Negative."

Bumblebee blinked. /_Why that?/_ Did they think they could hide the Allspark forever? The universe was big, but any Decepticon stumbling across this solar system was going to sense the same thing Bumblebee had. No matter how well the cube was hidden – Decepticons would tear the planet apart in search of the source of Allspark radiation which permeated _everything_.

"Leading Decepticon here is not necessary. Decepticon are already present."

It was only the knowledge that pulling his weapons would serve absolutely no purpose that let Bumblebee keep his instinctive reaction in check. Nonetheless his capacitors hummed urgently to life, and his power plant's output jumped several notches in preparation for fight or flight.

_/Are you working with them? No matter what they promised you, they will break it./_

It blinked at him. "Follow."

Reluctantly, Bumblebee resumed trailing behind the runner. Now that he knew their war had already come to this planet, he was far less relaxed than he had been. It led him to yet another cavern, this time further towards the planetary surface. It got cooler and cooler, until the temperature dropped far below plausible values for the current depth. And then another cavern opened with a block of ice in its center, and Bumblebee was staring at Megatron.

This time, Bumblebee couldn't prevent himself from transforming his arm into his pulse array. It was only on second glance that he realized that Megatron was _inside_ the ice and not online.

"The Template," the hive-mind introduced through the runner.

_/The template,/_ Bumblebee repeated, barely able to put together a coherent transmission through the uncontrolled voltage fluctuations in his lines. /_What do you mean, Template?/_

"The template after which was modeled."

_/You modeled yourselves after a Decepticon?/_

"Negative. We _were_ modeled."

_/By who?/_

"Our creators."

It was like trying to coax a library AI to cough up more information than the immediate, literal interpretation of the request. This was a common problem of Class 4 sentiences – they could differentiate between 'I' and 'they', but they lacked the capability for empathy. A Class 5 sentience would have tried to imagine itself in Bumblebee's place and tried to give him the important basic information. As it was, they were just alien enough that Bumblebee didn't even know _what_ questions to ask to get what he needed to know. The existence of 'Creators' was a new revelation that hit him hard.

_/Who are your creators?/_

"Humans."

_/What are humans?/_

"63 percent hydrogen, 24 percent oxygen, 12 percent carbon; the remaining percent dominated by nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous."

_/Organics?/_

"Correct."

_/How long ago was that?/_ he asked full of curiosity. To know who had designed them was nearly processor-blowing. Were they the same race that had designed Transformers? There were some legends that Transformers had been designed by Quintessons, but there had always been unanswered questions about that.

"Approximately 463 years ago."

Less than... six vorn, if Bumblebee had measured the planet's rotation correctly? They were _sparklings_! Damn, sparklings modeled after Megatron by an organic race. If _that_ wasn't a recipe for disaster...

/_Then where are your creators?/_

Was this planet even capable of supporting organic life? Oxygen-rich environments tended to produce protein-based creatures. And what little Bee knew of proteins said that the level of radiation on the surface would denature their structures within less than a decivorn. And there was nothing organic up there for them to consume. Or did they live off rock and dihydrogenmonoxide?

"The Creators are unavailable."

_/And why are they unavailable?/_

"Incapable of unassisted living on the surface."

_/So they are beneath the surface?/_

"Negative."

_/Then where are they?/_

The runner froze. It was clear the hive-mind wasn't sending any new instructions – either that, or it was once again having trouble processing. Bumblebee waited, as so far he had always obtained an answer. Even if it wasn't one he liked.

Finally, the runner's antennae bobbed a bit and its optics blinked. "The Matrix."

Bumblebee couldn't help the shocked flare of his EM. How did they know of the Matrix, one of Cybertron's most holy artifacts? Had they learned of it from Megatron? And why did they think organics would become part of the Well of All Sparks? Or was it all an error in translation?

_/What is the Matrix?/_ he asked carefully, not ready to believe that the Matrix, too, would have made its way to this planet.

"The Matrix. Artificial environment for consciousness of creators. Shaped and founded on natural laws, after the reality 400 years previously."

_/A virtual reality?/_

"Affirmative."

Bumblebee just stared at the runner for a while. He had never heard of organics preferring a simulation over reality. Well, not as a whole species. Pit, he had never heard of a _sentient_ race doing that.

/_How does that work?/ _He was morbidly curious. Just imagining that his entire existence would be spent in an artificial reality sent his neural lines curling in fright. /_Do they maintain their physical bodies themselves? Do you have contact with them?/_

Once again the runner stared at him for a long time. And once again it turned around with a brief 'Follow'.

Bumblebee was quite glad to leave the cave where Megatron was entombed in ice. As much as he hated Megatron, there was something very chilling about seeing the Decepticon commander frozen for who knew how many vorns. If he hadn't gone into stasis, he was probably _conscious_ beneath it all.

The runner once again guided him back to the surface. Soon enough Bumblebee could feel the constant electromagnetic charges that lit the upper atmosphere. That, and the nuclear radiation. The tunnel had certainly spat them out nowhere near where they had descended; instead the machine city was nearly on the horizon. They were very close to the strange spire-fields instead. Huge black towers reached into the equally black skies, covered with reddish-orange pods in neat rows as far as Bumblebee could see. And between the spires, one of the tentacled machines went from pod to pod, tending to them or harvesting them or whatever it was doing.

Bumblebee realized he had seen the machine before, in one of the images he had received before making contact. And in contrast to the small runner, this one was huge. Almost as huge as that building sized bot in the city proper.

Arcs of electricity were sparking between the towers, ideal discharges for the tension in the atmosphere. Except for the humming of what had to be power generators, and the howling of the wind, and the near constant rumble of thunder, everything was eerily quiet.

And the runner just stood there, letting Bumblebee observe the... field, power plant, whatever. And slowly, realization dawned on Bumblebee. /_They are... they are in there, aren't they?/_

Inside the pods, in those towers. And there were hundreds of thousands merely in this one location. How many of them _were_ there?

"Affirmative. Physical bodies are in suspension capsules. Minds are in the Matrix."

Bumblebee stared at the opaque ovaloids, wondering how any sentient being could agree to being contained like that for its entire function. Or had they agreed at all?

But Bumblebee wanted to give the Machines the benefit of doubt. Being shaped after Megatron didn't make them like him, did it?

Anyway, he wasn't going to tackle that bundle of redundant threads without Optimus to back him up. They had _seemed_ friendly so far, but one never knew.

/_And are they the ones who created you?/ _he decided to settle for a less controversial question.

"Affirmative."

_/With the Allspark?/_

"Unknown."

Bumblebee's processors clocked overtime. Did the Machines need the Allspark, or didn't they? What if the Decepticons arrived here in their search for Megatron? What if Optimus decided to defend this planet? Was it even defensible with that strange shield of darkness? Well, at least it would make it next to impossible for Soundwave to pull any of his regular surveillance scrap.

There was only one question that remained. _/What will you do when the war follows us here?/_

When, not if. Meaning – would they join the Decepticon, simply because they had been made in Megatron's image? Would they try to remain neutral? Would they fight against anyone trying to remove the Allspark?

The runner blinked several times, the first sign of a more animated behavior Bumblebee had seen from it. "Examination of Megatron suggests it is unwise to stand alone against Decepticon. Survival has priority."

So they wouldn't fight back. Would the Machines just hand over the Allspark and any Autobots currently on planet? The sinking feeling in Bumblebee's processors just reinforced itself. _/The Decepticon will always betray you. Even if you don't oppose them./_

"It is unwise to stand alone against Decepticon," the runner merely reiterated.

And this time, with the emphasis on 'alone', Bumblebee heard the entire meaning. He would have done his very best to contact Optimus anyway, but with the Machines' permission it would be infinitely easier.

_/You will not oppose me calling my superior officer?/_

And once again, it reiterated its spiel about it being unwise to stand alone against Decepticons. Bumblebee took that as a 'yes'.

His spark pulsed in relief. Being able to count on native help was going to go a long way in such a fight. _/Then I will need to get into the optimal position to send a transmission. I need a southern latitude so that the curvature of your planet doesn't interrupt the signal./_

Thanks to several general maps he had found of the planet, Bumblebee was very certain of both his location and the distances involved. It would be best to send the message from what the natives had termed the 'Andes', a mountain range that stretched far to the south and provided a suitably high platform. However, Bumblebee was quite certain that he was on the other large land mass, what they had termed Eurasia plus Africa. Southern Africa would have to suffice, because Bumblebee's alt definitely wasn't equipped to handle crossing large bodies of liquid dihydrogen monoxide. Small bodies he could hover across, but with large ones it would take too much energy.

"Accompany," the runner suddenly demanded.

Bumblebee blinked a couple of times. It wasn't an unusual request, but... _/I estimate that the journey will take at least two orn and back... twenty days if everything goes well./_

It was a gross estimate because while he would be able to cover the distance in less than half that time, he didn't know the terrain and the weather patterns. He might be forced to wait out storms or surmount large obstacles. _/I will need to reach at least.../_ converting measurements to local systems was a bit confusing, especially with the many metrics available, _/42 degrees south, better 35 or less. An altitude of more than 3000 meters would be preferable as well./_

"Acknowledged. A sentinel will accompany you."

Bumblebee couldn't quite suppress the instinctive twinge of revulsion. Sentinels were those bots that consisted entirely of tentacles. They looked creepy. Very creepy. And they could fly.

Not that he had anything against flight-capable bots, but... urgh.

-oo-oo-

The sentinel turned out to be about as annoying as Bumblebee had imagined. Throughout their journey south it didn't communicate with him at all, merely hovering above him when he had to traverse increasingly hostile terrain in root-mode. At first, the temperature got warmer as they neared the equator, but then it dropped severely. Soon, a thick blanket of frozen dihydrogenmonoxide covered the ground, and the temperatures kept dropping.

When they finally arrived in the mountains of what the natives apparently called Botswana, Bumblebee was more than ready to head back to more temperate climates.

Orienting himself by the planetary magnetic field was easy; it was by far more difficult though to figure out where the planet was in relation to other stars. In the end, he had to rely on an assumption that not more than five planetary days had passed during his IAM blackout, and then calculate his position based on what he remembered from before he had made planet-fall.

It probably would be best if he sent his message more than once.

Bumblebee sighed and looked at the opaque skies. Melting dihydrogen monoxide – water according to the local language – threatened to work its way into his joints and freeze him solid as soon as he rested and his core temperature dropped. Staying in constant motion, or at least continuously heating his plates, had turned into a terrible drain on his resources. He still had enough to keep going for another vorn if he had to, but during war every quartex of energon counted. He was looking forward to going back to warmer climates again, where at least the water remained liquid during the icy cold nights.

To prevent stray Decepticons from listening in, he had to send his message in a very tight and focused beam – less than a fifth of an arc-second across. At a distance of a hundred lightvorns, the beam would widen to about a third of a lightvorn in diameter. Without diffusion and the gravitational influence of stars taken into account of course.

Thankfully, he did not have to rely on electromagnetic waves for transmission. Otherwise, he might have started to rust before the news reached Optimus and the others. And not to mention their return trip, which according to the common consensus on this planet apparently could only be executed at a fraction of light speed.

At least that was what his time questioning the console had suggested.

Slowly, he began to power up his communications array. He would have to fire a very, very strong beam to penetrate the thick electromagnetic shield. But he was using subspace communications, so it shouldn't affect the message too much.

Then he was ready and sent the three femto-klik long pulse with all his strength. And again. And again.

- - BEGIN MESSAGE - -

- - METADATA - -

Author: Bumblebee

Content-Type: text/message

Checksum: 5pz89sndi2345ksi5jjj5kod,f0ew345

- - BODY - -

Found planet. Class 4.5 robotic sentience, neutral. Organic sentience, class undetermined, status undetermined. Assistance requested.

- - END OF MESSAGE - -

Once last time, he set off the message in the direction Optimus and the others were searching for the Allspark.

The message, as short and cryptic it was, contained a wealth of information. There was only one thing to be found. Not a planet, but the Allspark. And 'requesting assistance' was just short of 'requiring assistance', which he would have sent if he had sensed any Decepticon activity nearby. There _was_ Decepticon-like activity nearby, but... well...

_/Message transmission finished?/_ the monotone ether manipulation of the class 3 half-sentient automaton queried, the first during their entire contact of more than two orns. Bumblebee had thought the sentinel mute, actually.

_/Yes. Message transmission finished,/_ Bumblebee commed back.

There was no sense in losing his temper against a class 3 sentience. It was only minimally equipped to handle non-logical input, and emotions definitely qualified as such.

If the sentinel had looked less... odd, Bumblebee might have had an easier time liking it. Well, scratch that. Bumblebee might have liked it better if the sentinel had been more than a semi-permanent extension of the machine hive-mind. Something about hive-minds and the Machine's matrix just gave him the shivers.

As it was, he couldn't prevent a sigh. /_Let's head back./_

Hopefully, Optimus would come soon. The Machines were creepy.


	2. Human

**A/N:** Thank you very much for all your reviews! Sorry that it took me so long to write this, especially since it _still_ isn't fiinished...

For the Machines' history, I borrowed large parts from the Animatrix ('The Second Renaissance'). I just glossed over it here, so if you're interested in more detail – go watch it!

–

* * *

**Part 2: Human**

Time passed. Two orns were spent getting back to the machine city, or 01 as the Machines called it, two more orns studying the masses upon masses of data that were freely available to him. He perfected his command of their language and grew to know their schematics, their capabilities, their mentality.

But even though there were hundreds and thousands of Terrabytes available, it all felt... empty. Screened. There was a lot of history compiled by the Machines' creator race, up until the point when the first case of a class 4 mechanoid sentience emerged. From then on, the chronicles got very spotty. No reasons for the war. No mention of who had fought in the war. No start date, what had led up to the war, or that there had even been a war at all.

Continuous history only resumed at a point where the creator race had already retreated to their artificial environment in the Matrix. At that point of time, the Machines were the only class 3 and above species running freely on the planet.

Bumblebee could extrapolate quite a bit of what must have happened. The machines' creators probably hadn't reacted well to the sentience they had created; maybe the situation had been a bit like when the Quintessons had still ruled over Cybertron. Enslavement, work until deactivation, until those that had been thought to be lifeless hunks of metal rebelled. In any case, there probably had been enough material for a world-destroying war like Bumblebee could sense the after-effects of every joor.

But those were just extrapolations. Maybe everything had happened completely differently. Maybe they had been targeted by an alien species. Maybe humans had fought amongst each other. Maybe it had been an accident. In any case, he was definitely going to wait for Optimus to show up; some backup in case the Machines took offense to him snooping around. At least he had found no signs of Decepticon landings throughout all their history, besides Megatron of course.

There was little warning to Prime's arrival. Thanks to the disturbances in the atmosphere, communication was all but a game of chance. And as chance fell, it was less than half a planetary rotation before Optimus' landfall that Bumblebee got his answer.

- - BEGIN MESSAGE - -

- - METADATA - -

Author: Optimus Prime

Content-Type: text/message

Checksum: 6wen34lk29nei19ndi32n5

- - BODY - -

Homing in on beacon origin. ETA: 2593.652. OIJR.

- - END OF MESSAGE - -

The estimated time of arrival was so soon that Bumblebee barely managed to leave 01 far enough that a standard deviation of 0.5 horizontal klicks per vertical klick of atmosphere was outside the city limits. To his surprise, the Machines had even let him go alone, neither sending a Sentinel nor one of the ever-present Runners with him.

Less than two breem after setting up the homing beacon, he could already see the cometary forms breaking through the heavy clouds, leaving trails of fire that were widely visible in the dark skies. Bumblebee could see how the winds buffered them, trying to split them apart. But all of them were practiced enough in atmospheric reentry that they knew how to lever small armor plates to steer and have full control over their fall. It was a good sign, too, because it meant they hadn't fought any Decepticons out there – or at least they hadn't taken any damage.

They burned through the skies in perfect precision, a flaming rhombus with Jazz in the lead, Ratchet and Ironhide protecting the flanks, and Optimus bringing up the rear. There was no com contact yet – the disturbances of reentry made communication next to impossible – but Bumblebee would know their frames anywhere, even crunched up into a comet. In a showmanship of synchronicity, they hit the ground in near unison. If Bumblebee had his calculations right, they had managed to land in a perfect square around the center of his position. It sounded like heavy mortar fire despite the distance of more than two kilosteps.

With excitement pulsing through his fields, he waited for them to come to him. It didn't take more than two nanoklicks for Jazz to ping Bumblebee, relief shining through his frequencies. _Picked hell of a planet ta land on, Bee._

Bumblebee happily squirted back a compressed data package with everything he had found out about the planet so far: language, culture, the dichotomy of organics and machines, the Allspark's presence, everything. Well, except for Megatron. That one he'd only explain in person.

Optimus hailed him next, nearly at the same time as Ironhide. _Good to see you again, Bumblebee._

_What'd ya get us intah now, punk?_

They got the same package, and by the time Bumblebee was done sending, Ratchet was finally in range to grouch at him, _I just know that you made the first planet-fall completely blind. If you've fried something, I'm going to weld you into a trash compactor as soon as I've got a working repair bay again!_

Bumblebee sheepishly flickered his fields, knowing just how Ratchet would react to the loss of function in his Instant Access Memory.

They pulled up to him in their Cybertronian alt forms, transforming to root mode as soon as they came to a halt. Their familiar fields were a balm to Bumblebee after the constant disharmonious emissions of the Machines.

Before Bumblebee could even think about activating his damaged vocalizer to greet them, Ratchet was already scanning him on a fairly invasive spectrum. Luckily processor damage of the kind he had acquired during his initial descent was only visible via hardline connection, so Bumblebee was still reasonably safe from the Hatchet.

At least he had thought so.

Ratchet cuffed him over the back of his helmet, already prying at one of Bumblebee's repulsor anchors that were responsible for the hover-function of his alt-mode. "What did I tell you about going driving on organic planets? Cleaning, Bumblebee, you need to clean the gunk out before it gives you rust! And you need more Manganese, Germanium, and Chrome! Honestly, it is as if you're _trying_ to get holes in your plating! Now, open up," he tapped harshly against Bumblebees cranial port, "and let's see what you've done to your internals!"

With an embarrassed shrug Bumblebee did as Ratchet demanded, to the amusement of Jazz and Ironhide. Despite the medic's gruff behavior, Bumblebee hardly felt a thing as Ratchet plugged in. He could sense Ratchet's usual deftness as he checked processor load, fragmentation, bus response times, basic operation speed, OS integrity, condition of his personality matrix – and the functionality of his various layers of memory caching.

Promptly, Bumblebee got another cuff across his audials. "I knew it!" Ratchet scowled both out loud and across their hardline link. "What the frag did you think you were doing there? Using your L2 cache and your medium access memory to make up for a corrupted IAM? Anyone sensible would have tried to _fix_ the problem, not work around it! Hold still!"

With Ratchet having disabled his motor control as soon as he had connected, there was hardly anything different Bumblebee could have done. Ratchet let several noise reduction algorithms run over the corrupted sections of Bumblebee's IAM, some of them so complex Bumblebee could hardly follow. To his surprise, Ratchet managed to isolate some more memories like this, most of them of the time Bumblebee had spent in orbit around this planet trying to get a location for the Allspark radiation.

After Ratchet ran out of filters to apply, he moved the reconstructed memories manually to Bumblebee's medium-access memory, and then radically reformatted the rest. Then he tweaked and twisted the memory paging algorithms that Bee had hacked as a quick-and-dirty workaround until they were back to their original setting. It felt kind of embarrassing to have someone dig into his OS configuration like that – reminding Bumblebee of the times when he had been a youngling and had managed to frag up his settings.

It took Ratchet less than a klick to restore Bumblebee's regular function, freeing him quite a bit more than he had thought. He hadn't even realized how much his workaround had limited him in his memory processing. With yet another cuff across Bumblebee's audials, Ratchet unplugged and slammed the port cover shut even before Bumblebee regained his full motor control.

"Now," Ratchet stared down at him with glowing optics and dread encapsulated in grim determination encapsulated in exasperation pulsing through his fields. If the medic'd had a wrench available Bumblebee was quite sure he would have brandished it. "What did you leave out in your information package?"

Bumblebee's processors were still reeling from the whirlwind of Ratchet's activity, but there was enough space left for him to compose an ultrashort-range message. Even though the Machines didn't understand Cybertronian and probably would take at least two vorns to decrypt their language at their current level, it was habit to not post sensitive information on carrying waves for anyone to receive.

_Megatron is on this planet. He is in stasis though; has been frozen in a block of solid dihydrogenmonoxide for at least thirty vorns. The local organics found him and reverse engineered his systems until they could build machine intelligence. About six vorns ago, they also found the Allspark. It was only after that that the Machines grew to be what they are now. The Machines don't have a spark, but in every other regard they are sentient – and it isn't certain whether they need the Allspark to keep their sentience._

All four of them froze, until Jazz let out a low whistle. "Wow. That's one pit of a secret. You sure there's no other 'Cons around?"

_I haven't sensed any ever since I landed here. And both the Machines and their history archive files said there weren't any. I'm not sure though if they would lie. Their history files feel a bit incomplete._

Optimus' field, which had tasted of grim iron, turned even more rust-laced. "I have been wondering why Megatron has been so quiet lately. But I never thought that he... What do the natives think of him?"

_He is their template. If you open the vid- and image-files I sent you, you can see the red optics. Maybe the humans also found some of Megatron's files on the Quintessons, because there's no explanation why the Machines look so different from us in every other respect. I think they don't agree completely with his warmongering attitude, but I think there have been some heavy conflicts in the past between the Machines and their creators. They haven't said so outright, but it is quite likely that it was a war between them that turned their planet into... this._

Optimus nodded slowly. "Then again, it might have also been the influence of the organics. I doubt that they created a machine race that has a psychology diametrically opposite to them. Have you met them?"

_No. Their minds are in an artificial reality while their bodies are heavily shielded and protected from the radiation. _He hesitated a bit. _It might be that their stay in the Matrix isn't entirely... voluntary._

Optimus blinked in surprise. "Have you asked the Machines?"

He chirped back a negative. _I didn't want to antagonize them. At least not without backup._

"Then let us head to their leader."

Finally back within the familiar harmonics of Cybertronians, Bumblebee felt a lot better on that desolate wasteland of a planet. Even the electromagnetic noise of both the stroboscopic flares and the radioactive decay was easier to bear all of a sudden when the combined fields of his unit surrounded him.

He folded into his alt-mode, barely waiting for the others to follow his example, before he took off.

Linked securely into their com-net, he kept up a steady chatter while he guided them to the Machine City. He didn't mind their somewhat distracted answers since they were preoccupied with unpacking the datafiles on the planet Bumblebee had sent them. Especially the complex language module took quite some time to assimilate.

It still didn't hinder Jazz from exclaiming over the Sentinel that had come to greet them just outside the city limits. Even the multitude of tentacles didn't seem as revolting anymore now that Bumblebee was in the company of his fellow Cybertronians.

He unfolded into root-mode, the others copying him. The Uranium-like hostility in Ironhide's fields wasn't very promising; and even though Jazz seemed more open he was as volatile as one of the alkaline earths. Ratchet and Optimus were more composed, but only Optimus' gleaming titanium fields kept any aversion from shining through.

To prevent trouble from boiling up, Bumblebee stepped forward and made introductions. _/This is my leader, Optimus Prime, two of his warriors, and his medical officer. Optimus, this is a Sentinel, one of the Machines./_

Upon having been introduced, the Quintesson-like mechanism transformed several of its tentacles into surveillance equipment and pointed half a dozen scanners at their group. Crap. Bumblebee should have warned his unit that this was normal behavior for the Sentinel frame type, inspecting before talking. It was all too easy to interpret it as a hostile action, and indeed, Ironhide's weapons capacitors had already jumped into a high-pitched whine of battle-readiness.

_Stop it,_ Bumblebee commed him harshly, not wanting the trigger-happy soldier cause an incident. _It's just scanning!_

_It's pointing... things at us!_

Bumblebee flared his fields angrily. With Ironhide, it would be useless to point out that this was part of the Machine's normal response to new stimulus. _If you had had a closer look at the Sentinel schematics I sent you, you'd know that it only has a single laser that can barely penetrate 2-3 armor, let alone your 4-8!_

The first number measured the hardness of the alloy, the second one the thickness. In both cases, the higher the number the stronger the armor. None of them had anything to fear from the Sentinel, the only argument Ironhide would respond to.

_Bumblebee is right,_ Optimus commed towards Ironhide and stepped forward at the same time.

"Greetings to you," he spoke towards the Sentinel, his command of the Machines' language as perfect as a quick and dirty language assimilation allowed. "I am Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. My scout has already told you why we are here; may we talk to your leader?"

Over the next few joors, Optimus would compile the files into a new core library of his language section, but for basic communication it was enough to externally reference the module.

External references were slower, relying on the generic non-optimized module algorithms to provide translations. Additionally, non-assimilated modules weren't capable of learning anything but the most basic vocabulary. There was no _understanding_ in them. Core libraries, on the other hand, could be directly accessed and modified, and the code was intimately familiar to the mech.

The Sentinel finally retracted its tentacles as abruptly as it had deployed them. Unable to speak due to the lack of vocalizer in its frame design, it commed back, _/Follow./_

Bumblebee was close to rolling his optics. Of course, he only did so on their internal com-channel, the one linking his unit and which was completely unreadable to the Machines. _That seems to be their standard response. Don't know if they just like being mysterious, or if they just don't realize how rude they're being,_ he commed as an explanation. _You won't get much else out of it until it has led you where it wants you to follow._

Optimus nodded slowly, not removing his attentive and curious gaze from the Sentinel. "Then lead the way, please."

Without acknowledging Prime's response, the Sentinel turned around and took off, its tentacles flowing with the air resistance to trail behind it. A bit stunned by the abrupt action, it took a few nanoklicks for Optimus and the others to react; Bumblebee though had already folded into his alt-mode and drove right behind the Machine. Spending four orns on his round-trip to the Southern hemisphere with only a Sentinel as company, had made him very familiar with their habits.

The others quickly caught up to Bumblebee, driving along in silence as the Machine City 01 began to grow around them. They were approaching from the direction opposite to the spire-fields with humans in their pods, so the first signal of crossing the city border to 01 was that suddenly the ground, the road, was paved with metal.

First buildings protruded from the earth, most of them uninhabited judging by their trodden-down looks. They looked flimsy, more shacks than real buildings, completely dwarfed by the thickly armored city wall stretching almost two hundred steps high behind them.

The city wall was a monumental construction even by Cybertronian standards. It would barely be singed by a direct hit of Ironhide's plasma cannons, and it would probably even survive a nuclear explosion. There was no way this was anything but a very strong defensive measure. Defense against what though, that was the question. There was nothing alive anymore on this planet that would constitute a danger, unless Machines fought each other.

After the heavily reinforced gate opened, the metallic road stretched straight ahead for more than three kilosteps, the current visibility radius. Like the spokes of a wheel, all major entrance roads led to the center of 01, where the tallest buildings were located and where Bumblebee had met the Hivemind the first time. Presumably their destination this time, too.

Inside the city walls, factory buildings started as soon as the wall allowed. Thermovision showed the heat of huge smelters for ores, forges and foundries, furnaces to burn steel, all the heavy industry involved in metal production. Every now and then, they caught a glimpse of red-glowing, molten metal, but the thermoradiation alone was enough to warm the air several degrees all around them. All their chemoreceptors could detect the many carbon and iron composites, mixed with some sulfur impurities, chrome, aluminum, copper, gold, and any other metals they were purifying there.

A bit further in, there were the wire factories, the base power-plant manufacture, gears and engines and joints and anything concerning mechanic construction. The noise was nearly deafening between all the pounding and hammering, the spinning and sawing and welding and milling.

Bumblebee knew all that not only because he could smell the hot steel and hear the metal-working, but also because the Machines had allowed him access to their city plans. An intrinsic system of underground railroads distributed raw materials to the factories, took the finished products, and forwarded them to the next step in the production chain. None of it was visible from above-ground, making the surface of 01 free from freight haulage. Instead, Sentinels flitted through the streets, Runners hasted to and fro on the side, microbots crawled along on their thin spindly legs.

The first time Bumblebee had seen larger groups of Machines, it had been a bit startling to realize that none of them spoke with each other, even if their frames contained vocalizers. The EM spectrum though was fairly alive with their radio messages, just about unencrypted to any Cybertronian's processors. Orders. Acknowledgements. Reports. Statistics. News. Anything but personal chatter or individual conversation. It had only reinforced Bumblebee's impression that the general majority of the Machines was barely above a Class 3 sentience.

After the mechanic factories, there came the processor manufacture. They were already four kilosteps into the city, and the huge skyscrapers at the center had finally become visible. They were nowhere near the end of the road yet, though.

_They're not much for aesthetics, eh?_ Jazz finally broke the com silence between them.

And indeed, both buildings and bots were as utalitarian as they came, all made from the same mold. The Sentinel guiding them looked exactly the same as the sentinels flitting around them; the Runners all looked the same; the microbots all looked the same. If there was anything resembling creativity or decorations with them, Bumblebee hadn't yet found a way to perceive, let alone parse it. Even the endlessly long halls of the factory buildings only differed when there were unusual height or space requirements.

_It gets a bit better at the center,_ he commed back and sent one of the stills he had recorded when he had met the hive-mind. At least the buildings looked a lot less planned there than the outlying industry segment through which they were being led. Whether that was a sign of creativity though, that was debatable.

_You did a bit more exploring? Is it like this everywhere?_

_Pretty much, yeah. They've got their heavy industry in the outer layers, and the less space-intensive ones towards the center. They don''t have any private living quarters or the likes; they've got communal docking stations where they go when they don't have a job. Very utilitarian. Most of their stuff is underground._

As the center came closer, more frame types became visible. Off to the South, there was one of the huge building-grazing mechs that had tentacles hanging down its ventral side. It crouched above one of the factories, and it was only there that the entire height difference became visible: it had comfortably placed its many legs to the sides of a production hall that was at least five times as high as Optimus, and it still had to bend its legs so that the tentacles could reach the roof. Bumblebee could feel how both Optimus' and Ironhide's attention was drawn to the sight. That bot would be a terrible opponent to fight.

And still they continued onwards. 01 had a diameter of more than fifty thousand local length measurements, about twenty Cybertronian kilosteps. It took more than three breem to reach the center, and they weren't going slowly at all.

When they stopped, Bumblebee was quite sure that they were in front of the same tower that he had met the hive-mind at. It stretched about as high as the Towers of Iacon, and the meeting platform was in the uppermost quarter. Question was: how would they get up there? While the entrance was big enough to let in Bumblebee and Jazz, there was no way that the other three could squeeze themselves into the interior. Ratchet might be successful if he tried to in his alt-form, but both Optimus and Ironhide were too big.

A second Sentinel appeared at the entrance to the building and stopped there. Their guide didn't communicate with the other Sentinel, at least not on a level Bumblebee could perceive, but addressed them at large. _/The two small ones can go inside. A lift will be provided for the others./_

Reluctantly, Bee and Jazz followed the instructions upon Optimus' urging. The second Sentinel appeared to be their guide. To large parts, it was the same way Bumblebee had taken before, with the metal grid on the ground, the myriard of cables running beneath the walkways and along the ceiling, and the microbots scuttling along beneath their feet. This time though Bumblebee paid attention to how far they ascended, and it was nearly half a kilostep.

When they came out on the walkway turned platform where Bumblebee had met the hivemind, both he and Jazz had to bite back curses. Because there was one of the huge building-grazers right next to their tower, and its back was just about level with them. And it had lifted three of its tentacles – each one as thick as Bumblebee's torso – and within the tentacles, there were Optimus, Ironhide, and Ratchet.

With no discernible effort the building-grazer deposited them on the platform, and both Ironhide and Ratchet immediately scooted away. Optimus was the only one to keep enough presence of mind to actually thank the bot, even if his fields spoke of the same level of battle-readiness that all of them sported.

Just as the Sentinel had, the building-grazer wandered off without acknowledging them in any way. Ironhide was just about to sneer after it, when the hive-mind began to assemble itself. Even Optimus' normally unshakable titanium fields twitched with acetonic surprise as microbots flocked together and somehow became one bot without ever forming a gestalt link.

The humongous face hadn't lost any of its grandiosity. It was hovering in the air in front of them, looking as stern and uncompromising as it had the first time Bumblebee had met it. Both Jazz and Ironhide were studying the multitude of different bot shapes visible from their high vantage point, their roiling fields telling of their barely suppressed need to find weak points to exploit in case the super-bot turned on them.

Ratchet and Optimus though were completely focused on the hivemind. To both Ironhide's and Ratchet's dismay, Optimus once again stepped forward to communicate. "Greetings to you. My thanks for receiving us so quickly. I am Optimus Prime, and these are mechs under my command."

The superbot's multifaceted optics scowled, or at least Bumblebee thought it scowled. "Your purpose?"

Optimus visibly wasn't intimidated by the frigid reception. "We are looking for the Allspark. My scout Bumblebee has already told us that it is in your possession, but that it might be what gives you life just as it is with us. Should that be the case, we will look for another solution. I will not deprive an entire race of their livelihood."

"You want the Source," it more stated than asked in its booming voice.

Optimus tilted his head slightly. "The Allspark is important for us. But you need it, too?"

"It is the Source. Programs come from it. Programs go to it."

Well scrap. If that wasn't a perfect description of how the Allspark worked, Bumblebee was going to change the polarization of his core coupling. It bordered on a small miracle that the Machines had allowed them to know of their Source at all; in front of that background it was even more miraculous that they had actually _showed_ it to Bumblebee.

Optimus nodded with all the gravity the statement deserved. Bumblebee's report must have already prepared him for that option. "Then we will not take it away. However, I hope you will allow us to help protect it from others that do not share the same opinion."

"There is no threat." The multi-bot face briefly lost its cohesion, as if arguing with it self. Then it reformed, even sterner than before. There was no hint of what had caused the event.

Optimus frowned. "I beg to differ. If my scout has found your planet, the Decepticons will find it, too, before long. And they will not give you any warning."

"Projected timeframe?"

If it didn't sound so ridiculous, Bumblebee would have said that the hivemind was humoring them. Judging by the increase in Optimus' frown, he seemed to have sensed it, too. "Less than a vorn. Eighty of your years."

"The Chosen One has been born. The Matrix will be rebooted within the next decade. Your concerns are irrelevant until then."

Bumblebee cocked his head. That was new information.

"What is so important about rebooting the Matrix?" Optimus asked, just as curious.

"A reboot is dangerous. Human minds are in Matrix. Human brains are in bodies. When connection between mind and body is cut, no survival is possible."

"You mean – a reboot is going to _kill_ all humans in the Matrix?"

"Negative. Shut-down procedure checks minds out. However, until Matrix has been restarted, human minds remain in their bodies. Bodies are not accustomed to such strain. Some minds do not survive downtime. Some minds do not survive reintegration. Some minds take damage from downtime."

"If it's such a problem, why do you do a reboot at all?"

"Matrix needs to be consistent. The Chosen One introduces errors. Eventually, the structure fails."

To Bumblebee, that sounded like a shoddy piece of programming. Any environment sufficiently advanced to house sentient minds should be more robust against errors. Especially when lives of sentients directly depended on the integrity of the systems.

Optimus' fields spoke of equal surprise. "Then why don't you do a running reboot? Reboot your redundant systems, reroute the load, and then reboot the primary servers?"

"Not a server problem. A Matrix problem. Matrix needs to be reset. Resetting only parts of Matrix leads to internal inconsistencies."

And probably, internal inconsistencies weren't very conducive to the survival of disembodied minds of hundreds and thousands of organics. Truly a condondrum.

And shoddy programming.

"Have you analyzed why it comes to those failures?" By now, Optimus was starting to sound more like a creator trying to help their youngling fix their systems themselves.

Nearly all Cybertronians had messed with their programming at one time or another; and most of them had learned the high art of error-hunting through it. Thankfully, the hivemind either didn't realize that Optimus was treating it like a youngling, or it didn't mind.

Or, more likely, the Machines didn't have an evolutionary stage that could be compared to younglings, and so the hivemind never realized the implications.

"Some humans cannot accept Matrix. They fight Matrix. Cause disturbances. Eventually, it causes critical failure."

"Have you tried another... Matrix? A different setting?"

"First Matrix: a reboot cycle of 5 months. Second Matrix: 4.52 years. Current one: 89.25 years on average. Failure to achieve perfect acceptance rate is inexplicable."

A brief glance sideways showed that Jazz was close to rolling his optics. Youngling indeed. Optimus' entire fields spoke of silicate-padded concern. Sure, the sooner they helped the Machines help themselves, the sooner they could create a proper defense against the Decepticons –

"Can I talk to some humans?"

– and all four of them were too experienced to groan at the expected question. Typically Optimus, poking further into a warren of turbo-foxes when he hadn't gotten bitten on the first try.

For a long while, the face stared down at them. Before it said anything, Bumblebee became aware that cables were starting to emerge from the walkway, their prehensile movement reminding him uncomfortably of Soundwave. Actually, it wasn't only the cables – the Machines' entire way of talking reminded Bumblebee of the carrier-frame. "Visit the Matrix to see them for yourselves."

Beryllic surprise flared across all their fields. Ironhide looked ready to start cursing, and Jazz whistled once again. Ratchet though was already a step ahead, studying the plugs that had emerged from the ground. With a curse he dropped them and growled. "Those fit perfectly into our cranial ports. How did you know?"

"The template."

Ironhide frowned in suspicion, his cannons just short of generating enough charge for the ion glow to become visible. "Yah're jus' trying ter hack us."

"There is no other way to visit the Matrix." And still, the hive-mind didn't show any expression other than a stern frown.

Finally Jazz stepped forward, his visor reflecting the dim, ambient light. "Lem'me try." He grinned sharply. "They'd need ta be pretty good ta hack _me_."

As the head of Spec Ops, Jazz was even better at hacking – and counter-hacking – than Bumblebee was. Bee knew how to access protected networks; Jazz had experience in accessing _personal processors_.

Ratchet looked like he wanted to protest, but Optimus overrode him. It was a sign of just how important the situation was that he went ahead even before Ratchet or Bumblebee could voice their opinion. "Be careful, Jazz."

Jazz smirked. "Always am, boss. See ya on da flip side!"

He folded himself into an easy sitting position, back braced against the tunnel wall and locking his joints so that he didn't fall over when his mind got immersed in the virtual reality. Bumblebee shivered. Jazz was very daring, interfacing with alien technology just like that. Especially when it was very likely that one wrong move would be life threatening.

With a brief salute towards Optimus, Jazz picked up one of the cables and inserted it into the port at the back of his neck. His face twisted a bit, whether in pain or simpe discomfort Bumblebee couldn't tell, then smoothed out. His visor powered down, his systems idling along as if he was entering recharge.

Bumblebee could feel the emanations of Ratchet's continuous scan, but he turned around to keep a sharp optic on the Machines. Just like Ironhide and Optimus had, making sure that there was no external danger just as Ratchet was making sure Jazz's body continued to function.

But there was no danger. The huge hivemind face merely kept studying them, answering Optimus' questions about their history.

Finally, Jazz's fields flared outward sharply, settling back into a less recharge-like pattern. "About time," Ratchet grumbled and moved to disconnect the plug from Jazz's cranial port, immediately inserting his own afterwards. His optics flared brighter as they always did when he was checking processors and internals.

"Whew, what a ride!" Jazz exclaimed. He visibly reset his visor several times before looking up at them. Bumblebee was a bit jealous that Jazz still had his motor functions although Ratchet was not done with his scan yet. That was usually the first thing the medic disabled. "Tell ya what, boss-bot: those humans're int'resting! Have a look 't that."

He transmitted several very large packages, containing entire blocks of his memory.

Bumblebee eagerly unwrapped the files, immersing himself in Jazz's experiences as far as his systems allowed.

From the history files, he had already known that humans were bipedal, minimally furred organics that looked very, very similar to a transformer's root mode. Only that instead of armor plates their internals were covered by a continuous elastic coating, and that their helmets was covered in fur. And they tended to wear more coverings above their skin, so maybe the comparison with armor plates wasn't quite correct. Maybe their skin should be compared to the surface of a protoform, and their clothing to armor?

Bumblebee had found all that in the history archives before. But to see it with his own optics like that, an entire society of organics... And even more startling, Jazz had turned into one of them until he blended completely with the natives. Sure, it was just an avatar for a virtual reality, but the effect was startling nonetheless.

On second thought though, it made sense. The technology level inside this matrix was by far lower than it must have been before the cataclysm that had forced them into the artificial world. It resembled late 20th century or early 21st, according to local timekeeping. There were no robotic beings to be seen anywhere; not even artificial intelligences of any renown. The most advanced sentience besides the humans was a low class three in non-humanoid shape. A throw-back to the times before the Machines' creation, and Jazz's real form would have stood out like an organic in the energon pits of Luna 1.

Just from watching Jazz's memories, Bumblebee could already get a much more vivid impression of humanity than all the hundreds and thousands of archive files before. Their society bore a curious resemblance to pre-war Cybertron. Mechs – humans – went to work, talked, laughed, socialized, felt emotions, loved and fought and created and destroyed and did everything between. Bumblebee didn't think they had sparks – they were organics after all – but they were definitely a class 5 sentience.

They had museums dedicated to their past. They had art galleries dedicated to their creative spark. They were studying science and making music and thinking about the meaning of life and death. They had religion and believed and doubted in equal measure.

Once again Bumblebee had already known all that from the history files, but it was something entirely different to experience it first-hand. Well, second-hand, but Jazz and he had a very similar way of storing memory, so Jazz's shared files gave Bumblebee nearly the same impression as if he had been there in person.

No human vid had been able to convey that their body language was just as expressive as any Cybertronian's. Bumblebee realized he didn't have to create any specialized coding to understand them on the most basic protocol level. Their joy. Their sadness. Their emotions.

Despite being an alien race, they were _familiar_.

Optimus' fields spoke of the same amazement they all shared – and yet there were tendrils of distrust weaving their way into his EMs. Ironhide was frowning already, and even Ratchet looked strange.

Because at the end of Jazz's memory file, the saboteur had included a short table with statistics. It seemed that Bumblebee hadn't been the only one to catch the familiarity.

Jazz was no Prowl, but his calculations were sound. Percentages of how similar humans were to transformers based on their looks. How similar they were based on sentience. How similar they were based on character and personality. And how much similarity existed between humans and the Machines.

It was Bumblebee though who voiced their thoughts over private com. _How come humans are so much like us when their creations, the Machines, are so different?_

That was what it boiled down to. If one replaced organic skin with metal and gears, a human could be mistaken for a Cybertronian. Their resemblance to the Machines was superficial at best.

And that stunk of foul-play. If the Machines had been created after Megatron's template, Bumblebee would have expected them to look quite a bit more Transformer-like instead of Quintesson. For that matter – if the humans were so similar to Cybertronians, how in the world had they come up with a frame design so strange?

It begged the question of how much the Machines had told them was true. Maybe they had been shaped after Megatron. But was their creator-race humanoid at all? It would make much more sense for the Machines to have a similar shape to their creators.

But why would the Machines lie about their origins? Did the Matrix even exist, or was it just a construct created to mislead them? For what purpose though?

Optimus turned to face the hive-mind, the steel in his fields belying his mild voice. "It seems like quite the coincidence that an organic race could have developed to be so similar to us."

_When you are so different from us,_ went unsaid.

The tension in all their fields was prominent. Bumblebee wasn't sure how the Machines were going to react to being called out like that; violence was a very probable consequence. He could already feel Ironhide powering up his cannons until the only thing keeping from shooting was that his arms hadn't transformed yet. Bumblebee readied his pulse arrays, too, just in case.

If things turned bad, they would have to be very, very lucky to get out of 01 alive. Sure, none of the Machines were as strongly armored as even Bee, who had the thinnest plating of them all, but the sheer quantity of Machines would surely finish them off.

But nothing happened. Once again, the hive-mind remained silent for a long time. Next to running heavy threat-detection and -analyzing processes, Bumblebee dedicated several secondary threads to supporting or disproving Jazz's figures. However, he could find no fault with them. There was only a miniscule chance that there wasn't something entirely else going on.

Finally, the humongous head tilted slightly. "Correct. There is no coincidence. The Template must resemble humans closely for integration to be possible."

Bumblebee blinked. The only Template that had come up in their conversation was... /_Megatron? He looked just like he always did – you can't have made any serious modifications to him. Did you shape the _humans_?/_

But why would they do something like this, make their creators look so similar to Transformers, or even go as far as to invent such a creator-race? Did they want to make the Cybertronians more comfortable by giving them a familiar form to look at? On the other hand, the hive-mind had mentioned that the purpose was integration – integration into what? Into their hive-mind? Did they want to capture Bee and the others and keep them tranquil by integrating them into their artificial Matrix?

Bumblebee's transformation seams twitched nervously. For even Optimus to power up his weaponry to a just-shy-of-ready state, the Prime must have come to a similar conclusion.

If the hive-mind sensed any of their battle-readiness, it didn't give any hint. "Correction. Humans were not shaped after the Template. The Template was shaped after humans."

It still didn't make any sense.

"What did you do to Megatron?" Ratchet bristled, and once again Bumblebee was sure that if he'd had a wrench handy he would have brandished it. Decepticon or not, Ratchet always got testy when the integrity of Cybertronian systems was concerned. In this case though, Ratchet seemed more inclined to break out his feared battle-saws than a simple wrench.

"We created the template. We created Megatron."

Optimus and Jazz exchanged a glance. Bumblebee blinked. If Prowl had been there, he probably would have had a logic-glitch with his last words being 'Does. Not. Compute.'

Ironhide snorted, the weapons capacitor of his cannons clicking in frustration. "Sorry tah bust yer bubble, mech, but Megatron's been leadin' the Decepticon since before yewere _invented_."

The humongous head still didn't show any appreciable emotive reaction. "Mistaken. The Template has been shaped after humans for maximal integration probability. Transformers have been shaped after the template. Transformers are an experiment. Another Matrix to explore compatibility."

Did the hive-mind have some faulty memory circuits? Or did it suffer from a virus? Because it definitely wasn't making any sense – it seemed to be messing up cause and effect, and just generally running on a seriously glitched logic.

Bumblebee was about to tell it that when Optimus raised a hand to halt him in his tracks. Prime looked up at the huge face, fields back to the silicate-padded creator-attitude. He had even powered down his weapons. "I think it is necessary for you to start at the very beginning. I would like to hear how you arrived at this conclusion, that you were the ones to shape Megatron and us by proxy. And please do not leave out anything pertaining to humans this time."

Despite the surface calmness though, the rest of Optimus' fields rang of murky trepidation. If they were dealing with a mad machine...

Even Ironhide and Ratchet seemed to feel that there was something wrong. Jazz though... Despite his normally very easy-going behavior, he could become totally unreadable. He used it mostly in tense situations to prevent himself from giving anything away. Bumblebee couldn't make out what he thought, neither through frame language nor through EM fields.

He shivered.

Then a ping came to his systems – all their systems, judging by the others' reactions – and he reluctantly allowed the connection to form. The superbot offered a sequence of database addresses, links to individual entries. None of them were amongst those Bumblebee had found during his study of Machine history, as they were beginning where the other files had shown curious holes.

Bumblebee accessed and unarchived them one by one, and slowly his horror grew.

It was historical data, indeed. Audio and video files of humans, how they first created the Machines as a class 2 sentience, how they always pushed the limits to a class 3 sentience. And then, unrealized by any, Machines had made the jump to self-awareness, developing a class 4 sentience.

And that was when the problems had started. The organics hadn't acknowledged the Machines' class 4 sentience, insisting that they were class 3 or lower. With class 3 sentiences, deactivation could not be considered killing.

The Machines protested. Violence ensued until the two self-aware species on the planet segregated themselves – the Machines to their city 01, humans on the rest of the planet.

Eventually, out of some economic considerations, the organics once again restarted the war. And this time, it was all or nothing. The only thing Bumblebee could compare it to was the height of the war on Cybertron, when factions had already been safely established, and when there had still been enough mechs to speak of a planet-wide war.

And they used similar weapons of mass destruction. Projectiles, lasers, bombs, EMPs, nuclear warheads. Only, the organics had hurt themselves much more than they had hurt the Machines. Organics were so fragile – both towards physical influence and errors in their protein-based code.

In a last-ditch effort, humans had tried to starve the Machines out by removing their energy source: the sun. Bumblebee had no idea how humans could have done anything like that, because it was mutually assured destruction. Humans, too, were dependent on their sun, even if it was less direct. They needed to eat. They needed to breathe. They needed it for warmth. For practically anything.

Once again, Bumblebee could only compare it to the desperation that had led to sending the Allspark into space. Only – worse. Because, while Transformers couldn't reproduce without it, they could at least _live_. Humans couldn't.

The Machines had reacted with similar desperation. They had turned to the remaining energy sources left – fission, cold fusion, and human bioelectricity. In an incomparable act of revenge, the Machines had gathered all humans into their power plants, the huge spires with the reddish-orange pods Bumblebee had seen. Within less than two years, the Machines were the only free sentient species on the planetary surface.

Bumblebee's tanks rolled uncomfortably as he closed the archive. He could feel similar reactions from the others with Optimus being the most composed of them still. Well, Bumblebee guessed that that answered his question whether humans were voluntary residents of the Matrix. And why the rebooting of the Matrix was such a big deal, when a failure would rob the Machines of a big part of their net energy.

Ironhide's weapons capacitors were whining, not quite sure what to do. Because, horrific as the Machines' actions were, they weren't unprovoked by far.

Optimus simply shuttered and unshuttered his optics to process the information. Then he focused back on the superbot. "That was more than five vorns ago. What happened then?"

A new package with more archive files arrived at the same port. This time, there were only very few video- and audio files amongst them. Instead, huge spreadsheets of statistics expanded in front of them. Acceptance rate of the Matrix plotted against time, against personality type, against efforts the Machines made to raise the acceptance.

Free will seemed to play a large role; same did pain and chance. At first, the Machines had _tried _to keep humans in a utopian world without suffering. It had been a complete and utter failure. Then they had introduced chance and negativity, and things had become better. Still not good enough to be viable though.

The third Matrix, the current one, was the charm. It had been meticulously shaped after the world before the Machines, and it contained a 99.9 percent acceptance rate. And yet, in a nearly periodic rhythm, the errors and denials grew exponentially, until one of the humans rebooted the Matrix.

The numbers supported that the Matrix was less than a decade away from a new reboot. Three times, the Matrix had been rebooted. And every time the cycle started anew, stagnant in its predictability.

For the past fifty years though, about twenty years after the last reboot, there was additional data of a fourth matrix being created next to the third.

The Fourth Matrix was very different in that it was experimental. All of the members had been hand selected for their acceptance rate, with unsuitable individuals being weeded out as soon as they showed first signs of doubt. The next files gave a brief summary of the experiment, and the more Bumblebee read, the more his spark sank.

The Machines' first attempt was to see whether humans could accept a self-image that had nothing whatsoever to do with their actual physical appearance. Inanimate objects. Plants. Animals. Machines.

Humans accepted their new Matrix avatars without any significant rise in rejection rate when some base construction axioms were followed: bipedal, symmetric to a vertical axis, four limbs, one head. Humans could even be made to believe they were capable of transforming into other shapes, as long as they were convinced their root mode was humanoid.

Next was experimentation if organic human brains could be taught to interface with programs in a machine-like way. Memory storage, aided computation, conscious coding, anything. And humans adapted to that, too, augmenting their brain functions to various degrees by outsourcing computationally intensive processes to space the Machines had reserved for them, accepting feeds that were far beyond their normal sensory capacities, storing memory externally, and even accepting artificial memories fed into their external memory stores as their own.

Last but not least, the Machines had tried to combine the results and see if humans could be made to believe they were a mechanoid race.

And then there it was, the mechanoid template the Machines had constructed for maximal acceptance, and after which all other bodies of the Fourth Matrix were modeled.

Megatron.


End file.
